What to do to get registered
Why The Change to Registration for Messaging
With changes to the current messaging landscape, mobile carriers are now requiring any business users that send SMS messages over 10-digit numbers (A2P 10DLC) to have those numbers registered with an organization called The Campaign Registry (TCR). https://www.campaignregistry.com/.
The intent is to cut down on text message spam that has become a growing problem for their mobile customers. Registering with TCR allows TCR to review your use-case for what you intend to use messaging for, link the Brand (the business entity sending the messages) and the Campaigns (each specific use-case) with the CSP (Campaign Service Providers), along with the list of telephone numbers the messages will be sent from, all with the purpose of providing complete traceability back to the originator of any message. If your messages are determined to be non-compliant, the mobile carriers will happily send us a fine, which we will then pass on to you. Repeated non-compliance will result in the mobile carriers blocking your number completely from messaging.
In order to prevent the risk of financial penalties, we will take the step of disabling all SMS messaging for use with Vitelity numbers.
If you do want to keep sending messages vis SMS, the source numbers require a registration with TCR. However, until the whole registration process is complete and approved, we cannot enable you to send SMS messages.
Steps to Get Registered
There is a relationship hierarchy that is required in order to provide full traceability of messages through the entire messaging chain, and as a reseller, you play a part in this chain. We have a very comprehensive set of resources available here:
This article will attempt to distill this down to what is important for you to know and how to get started.
Becoming a Campaign Service Provider
Since you own the customer relationship and are selling the services to your customers, you are their CSP (Campaign Service Provider). This means you must register with TCR so that you can enter your customer's brand and campaign registrations.
To begin, start here:
https://www.campaignregistry.com/
Click the Register Now button to begin.
TCR has a number of helpful documents in their FAQ section. The guide linked below provides a walkthrough of completing the registration process and then how to enter brands and campaigns for your customers.
The first step you will need to do is complete your registration as a CSP. This can take several days for approval. Note that TCR does charge a fee to become a CSP. Slide 8 of the Portal Guide contains expected fees.
When filling out the CSP info, you may be asked to specify a DCA, or Direct Connect Aggregator or a CNP, Connectivity Partner. For either question, we are the next step in the chain and you will need to choose us from the list.
The official entity to use is the following:
ANPI Business
Do not choose Inteliquent or Voyant Communications. Those are different entities and will result in your CSP registration needing to be refiled.
Once your CSP registration is successful, you can create additional user accounts for your company to manage any brand and campaign registrations for your customers.
Brands and Campaigns
The next step is to begin filing brands and campaigns for your customers that wish to send SMS messages.
You will be asking a lot of information about your customer's company, the intended uses for messaging and the list of phone numbers they'll be sending messages from. All of this information is REQUIRED by TCR to evaluate the request and vet the customer. They are trained to know what will pass the mobile carrier's scrutiny in terms of your customer's registration request.
Cheat Sheet Form
To start, we have a handy form here:
A2P 10DLC Messaging Campaign Form
This form contains all the information that you need to collect from your customer in order to complete the brand and campaign registration in the TCR portal. You could use this form to hand to your customers to fill out, or use this as a checklist to help gather information needed to file for them. Once you have all the necessary information, you can begin to fill out the brand and campaign information in the TCR portal. Review the TCR Portal Guide as it has step-by-step instructions on what to fill out.
Vetting a customer is extremely important so the more information you have on the customer, the better. Only enter brands and campaigns for customers you trust will not abuse the service. There are steep penalties associated with content violations.
Brand Information
The first page in the cheat sheet form is the Brand information. This is information about the company you are creating a brand for, and should be pretty clear about what to fill out. Some of these are drop-down options in TCR, so try creating a brand in the TCR portal to view what options are available as these may change over time. A Brand can have multiple Campaigns if you have different use-cases that you use messaging for.
Campaign Information
The second page is the Campaign the customer wants to be filed. Note that "Campaign" is used loosely here in that it's normally associated with a text message blast, but in the context of filing for messaging use-cases, it really means what is going to be the content of the messages.
For your customer’s usage, the campaign choice really depends on how your customer is using the services you provide to communicate with customers and most importantly, the content of those messages.
If you have a lot of time, here is a very detailed article on what is A2P 10 DLC messaging and all the related information, most of which you don't really need to know to complete the form.
Everything You Wanted to Know About A2P 10DLC But Were Afraid To Ask
It's a lot as the mobile carriers have made this very complex.
However, since you don't really need to know all this, we'll list some parts of that info that will help in deciding how to fill out the campaign info.
We have a doc with a list of Best Practices for a successful messaging campaign. Note that this doc has a lot of detailed information, so the sections that might be relevant for your customers are Section 6 and Section 8. There are some useful notes in here about how to not run afoul of the mobile carrier's rules around content, which is where much of the focus is.
Some common use-cases will likely be "Low-volume mixed" if your customer is sending a limited number of messages per day. When choosing this, select the types of content you might be sending, like "Customer Care" or perhaps "Marketing". Many of the other types are more common for automated systems where you might be using APIs to send messages, like 2FA, Account Notifications, etc. Again, keep in mind the expected content of your customer's messages will help determine the use case category to choose.
For "Campaign Content and Attributes", you must select Opt-In and Opt-Out. Pay particular attention to "Embedded Link" and "Embedded Phone Number". If you commonly add a link or phone number to messages, Section 8.12.2 and Section 8.12.3 should be read and understood as these can easily trigger a review of your messaging campaign if you don't follow the recommendations.
Always check No on Number Pooling. Number pooling is a lengthy process for requests for over 49 numbers for a campaign, and usually incurs a $5,000 fee for the review process.
You can list up to 49 TNs for use with a campaign. Over 49 TNs incurs a very high fee in order for TCR and the mobile carriers to evaluate why you need more than that for a "campaign". This is referred to as Number Pooling. When choosing these TNs, be very selective about which numbers you message from. The carriers are also considering rules on how quickly a number can be switched from one campaign to another as well.
The Campaign Description should be something about how your customer is using messaging, and some sample message content they might send are required to help TCR in evaluating the use-case and content.
And finally, the list of telephone numbers (TNs) that should be allowed to send/receive SMS messages as part of this campaign.
When filling out campaign info, you may be asked to choose Other Responsible Parties to elect a CNP, or Connectivity Partner. We are the next step in the chain and you will need to choose us from the list.
The official entity to use is the following:
ANPI Business
Do not choose Inteliquent or Voyant Communications. Those are different entities and will result in your campaign registration needing to be refiled.
Brand/Campaign Registration Successful
Once you are notified in the TCR portal that your customer's brand and campaign registrations are successful, you will need to send the brand and campaign IDs to us for the next steps to complete the process. You must wait for all registrations to be completed before sending the information to us. We cannot complete the next steps on our side without being able to pull the Campaign IDs, and only successful ones are available to us.
One additional bit of information we need is specific to AT&T approval. This will show in your TCR portal. This is noted as a message class.
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One everything is approved, send an email to MessagingUseCase@inteliquent.com. Please include the following:
Subject Line: SMS Brand/Campaign Registration for Vitelity Reseller
Body: Indicate you are registering a Brand and Campaign. Include the following information:
For each Brand/Campaign
- Reseller Name - Use your Vitelity Reseller name
- Brand ID (from TCR – starts with B)
- Brand Name (helpful for you to identify the brand)
- Campaign ID (from TCR – starts with a C)
- Message Class (AT&T specific value on the campaign page above)
- Campaign Start Date (when it was registered)
- Campaign Description (helpful for you to identify campaign)
- List of TNs which should be provisioned to the campaign (limit is 49 numbers without a pooling request)
Once we have verified the brand and campaign IDs were successfully created, we will enable messaging for the numbers that were registered with the campaign.
Fees
The Campaign Registry (TCR) charges fees for their various services. These fees will be billed directly to you, the CSP, by TCR on your account.
Penalties
Watch your customer's content. There are heavy penalties that will be passed on especially by T-Mobile for any content violations. Some examples include the following:
|
Penalty |
Fee |
Description |
|
10DLC A2P Text Enablement Non Compliance Violation |
$10,000 |
T-Mobile penalty for sending texts from non-approved numbers - per violation |
|
10DLC A2P Program Evasion Non Compliance Violation |
$1,000 |
T-Mobile violation for using evasive measures - per violation |
|
10DLC A2P Content Non-Compliance |
$10,000 |
T-Mobile penalty for content violations - per violation |
If we are charged one of these fees due to a violation of one of your brands/campaigns, we will pass these on to you. Repeated violations will result in the brand being blocked from future messaging campaigns.
Other operators may add penalties in the future.